Implementation of PBL to enhance the soft skills of engineering students

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to look into the implementation of PBL in the teaching of engineering courses to enhance the students’ ability in soft skills. The importance of soft skills has been acknowledged in most occupations and many organizations make selection and performance evaluation decisions based in part on employees’ soft skills. Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach that has the potential to harness students’ ability in soft skills. Thus, this study looks into the implementation of PBL at a private university in Malaysia based on the lecturers’ industry experience, teaching experience and the engineering program they are in. A set of questionnaire is given to 90 lecturers teaching engineering courses to gauge the extent to which PBL is employed by the lecturers. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the mean scores of the two groups which were the lecturers with industry experience and the ones without industry experience on the teaching approaches employed by them. A one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) is conducted to explore the teaching methods employed by lecturers of different years of teaching experience and engineering programs. The analysis showed that 77.7 % of the lecturers prefer to employ problem-based learning (PBL) in their teaching of engineering courses. The results also revealed that the preference stayed constant in relation to the lecturers’ experience with the industry, years of teaching experience and the engineering program they are in. Thus, this illustrates that the lecturers prefer to employ student-cantered approach which lead to producing students with better soft skills like critical thinking. Similar patterns appeared in relations to the comparison by years of teaching experience, where lecturers with 6-10 years of teaching experience highly employed PBL. On the comparison by engineering program, lecturers from Chemical engineering (CE) program show the most frequently usage of PBL. The study also found that the soft skills that could be enhanced through PBL are critical thinking and problem solving skills, communication skills and teamwork skills.

SoftSkills Development of Prospective Educators by Means of Problem-Based ESP Learning

“…Similar results for the positive impact of problem-based ESP learning on language and soft skills were found in other studies (Barrows, 1996;Beringer, 2007;Hmelo-Silver, 2004;Schmidt, Vermeulen, & Van der Molen, 2006). A positive impact of the process of problem-based learning on developing thinking and learning skills of students is described in current research as well (Aleem, & Jamaludin, 2007;Radišić, & Nedeljković, 2012;Garcia, & Garza, 2015;Idrus, & Abdullah, 2018;Othman, 2017). The effectiveness of PBL in promoting strong critical thinking, knowledge construction, independent learning, and problem-solving has also been shown in some studies (Tan, 2009;Trilling, & Fadel, 2009).…”

“…As a result, students develop communication skills, critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities, as well as skills for working in a team. This approach can also help students to pave ways to enhance their personal development, increase their level of self-confidence and empower them to be active learners, excel in team working, as well as be able to accept challenges (Idrus, & Abdullah, 2018).…”

Physics competition to inspire learning and improve soft skills: a case of the Chain Experiment

“…While we acknowledge that further research is required in order to find specific contribution each of them have on chain experiment outcomes, the current literature could give us a hint for discussing current results. Each of these approaches separately stimulates soft-skills improvement (Dochie et al 2017;Idrus and Abdullah 2018;Trevor et al 2020), and thus it is not very surprising that their combination is also beneficial, as shown by the present study. Among the three approaches, it was shown that collaborative learning helps in building more-effective oral communication (Davidson and Major 2014;Springer et al 1999).…”

Implementasi Pembelajaran Berasaskan Projek (PBP): Manfaat dan Cabaran kepada Pelajar dan Guru

“…Seterusnya, dalam realiti dunia sebenar terutamanya melibatkan pekerjaan, PBP mengasah pembangunan kemahiran insaniah atau "soft skills" yang melibatkan komunikasi dan pembelajaran berterusan serta menjadi asas pemilihan pekerja dalam suatu organisasi serta pekerjaan (Idrus & Abdullah, 2018). Pernyataan ini turut disokong oleh Issa dan Khataibeh (2021) yang menyatakan, PBP dapat dijadikan penanda aras untuk mengenal pasti dan membezakan kemampuan pelajar.…”